There's this software for OS X called Karabiner, which lets you remap your keyboard to large extremes, and also allows you to chord keys.

I made a mapping for it which I think is similar to the TextBlade, so there's a home row cursor when you hold D+F, selecting with S+D+F etc. The symbols are also there when holding space and you can make the right pinkie have the closer keys as mapped by TextBlade.

Home row cursor is a lot of fun, symbols require getting used to and having backspace so close is awesome. It's sort of OK to use on the mac but the keys are sometimes a bit awkward - the textblade is slanted so that should help a lot. Space mapping can cause symbols to appear between words when you type sloppily .

I also enabled sticky shift and used Seil to remap capslock to the escape key.

Question: I had to guess about some green layer symbols, like the _, that have a green symbol on both sides of the letter. I presumed that the ones on the left need green+shift?

Also, I'm not sure about the mapping of beginning-of-line and beginning-of document, and if you have standardized on something for tab switching and desktop switching. I overrode the "Show Next Tab" and "Show Previous Tab" settings for all apps with the Mac keyboard settings to be the same as Chrome and mapped that to command+edit+previous/next word.

Would be great to have a document with official mappings... Doesn't even have to be final

Agreed, I too would like a document with the official mappings. None of the videos explain how you are supposed to type ~ (tilde), ` (backtick), _ (underscore), and | (vertical pipe), even though they're printed on the keyboard.

Also, for some reason the right pinky zone is a bit awkward on the staggered keys of a normal keyboard. I'm guessing they will feel much more natural on a real TextBlade.

For others trying this out, a high-quality overhead view of the keys is currently available here.

I too am interested in what the other keys do in edit/select mode. I'm also curious how things like Cut/Copy/Paste work on Windows vs. Mac since they need to send Control+X/C/V on Windows vs. Command+X/C/V on Mac.

One update people might be interested in: there's a Mac app called Type2Phone that allows you to use your Mac as a Bluetooth keyboard to your phone, tablet, or other computer. The price just dropped yesterday from $9.99 to $1.99 just for this weekend, so I tried it out with my iPhone together with wmertens' TextBlade Karabiner mappings, and it worked perfectly!

Great stuff on this thread - many thanks to wmertens and orand for the awesome suggestions.

Wmertens - it's worth forking off an idependent thread about requests for programming key assignments. Other keys remain open in edit mode that can be assigned to very useful functions for developer users. We think a new thread could crowd-source some input on the most requested features to really expand the uptake by software developers.

Note that comma right now also serves as down cursor (so does K). Experiments showed that sometimes users would want to hit either location to go down, so we support it.

Wow, I'm really loving this software. I have it working right now with Colemak bindings and it's amazing. I've been using it for programming and I feel so much faster than I was before. I can't believe how much I abused my poor right pinky.

I can finally touch-type numbers without looking at the keyboard, I don't have to do weird contortions to write symbols, I don't have to move to the arrow keys to navigate around, and the brackets are all so easy to reach and I never accidentally use a square bracket when I want a curly one anymore.

This has gotten me even more excited for the Textblade. Every time I feel like my hype hits a peak I just get more excited.

With the delivery of TextBlades getting ever nearer, and having now learned Colemak, I have revisited the Karabiner layout you created!

I am a BIG fan of Karabiner, and even without the TextBlade, this layout feels great. With Colemak my fingers would rarely deviate from the home row, with this layout the necessary deviation is reduced even further. Needless to say, this excites me even more about receiving my TextBlade.

I have an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard with a faulty '6' key, the Karabiner has the added benefit of 'fixing' this issue! This got me thinking: "If there was a version of Karabiner available for iOS, I could use my faulty keyboard with my iPad until my TextBlade arrives. Does anybody know of such software?